NEW YORK — The storied sweatbox that is Madison Square Garden gets louder than a cacophony of honking cabs, but even during Tuesday night’s vociferous fourth quarter, there was a silence on the Nuggets’ bench.

Coach George Karl was back in Denver, where he continues to battle throat and neck cancer. And now comes news that Karl will likely not be back to coaching until mid-April — the regular season ends April 13 — according to multiple sources close to the situation.

Karl is undergoing treatment that could end by the end of next week, but it’s still possible the fatigued coach will need recovery time.

Karl’s life partner, Kim Van Deraa, occasionally blogs about the coach’s fight and she posted Tuesday that: “On Sunday afternoon we had to rush him to the hospital. His leg was extremely swollen and he was having trouble breathing. After a phone call to the doctor, we transported George to the hospital and he was admitted for blood clots in the lungs and leg. They decided to keep him in ICU so he could be closely monitored.

“Subsequently, he underwent some procedures to place a filter in the stomach to catch any clots that break loose and also treatment for the clot in the leg. By Monday night, he was much improved.

“We’re not sure when he’ll be released or when his radiation will continue. We’re hoping both occur — since it would mean he’s gotten through the scare of the blood clots and we don’t want to add any weeks onto the schedule of radiation.”

Here in New York, as the Nuggets began an exhausting five-game, seven-day road trip, there’s a perpetual pall over the 47-24 team.

“You can’t not think about it,” Denver reserve Johan Petro said. “It’s really hard. You try not to think about it, but it’s there every day. You play for the guy. That’s our coach and we have to go out there and perform for him.”

The Nuggets’ coaching staff is like a family itself, a unit Karl said he spends more time with than his actual family.

“In a way,” Denver assistant coach Chad Iske explained, “(he’s) like a parent, and when you’re away at school, you want to come home with the good grades and make them speak well of you. You want to work hard and make him proud.

“But he’s done a great job of being supportive and not putting pressure on us like — if you lose games, you’re ruining this. I think we’re all trying to do our best to make him proud of us, more so than just trying to win games.”

Benjamin Hochman was a sports columnist for The Denver Post until August 2015 before leaving for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, his hometown newspaper. Hochman previously worked for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for its Hurricane Katrina coverage. Hochman wrote the Katrina-themed book “Fourth and New Orleans,” published in 2007.

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